Thanks to the new “injury tool” at Fantasy Pitch FX, we can conveniently see that Juan Rivera has spent 176 days on the DL in the last three seasons, or 76 days more than Garret Anderson has amassed during the entirety of his 14-year career.

When considering Rivera’s eight-year career, he has spent 247 days on the disabled list. Ouch…literally.

Essentially, then, we are looking at a player entering his age 31 season, and a new three-year contract, with 247 career days on the disabled list, much of that time spent healing fractures in both legs.

As cynics, we tend to believe that injury-prone players stay that way, and that broken leg bones never completely heal, at least from an athletic perspective.

Hopefully, though, we’re wrong, and Rivera will put all of his injury demons behind him in 2009 to (finally) reach his oft-heralded potential.